It's pretty much how we get anything added to the curriculum. When parents said children needed to be computer literate, the schools started responding. The same thing is true of basic financial literacy.

Meaningful rules in the consumer credit market can accelerate economic recovery. Rules would increase consumer confidence and, more importantly, weed out all the tricks and traps that sap families of billions of dollars annually.

It's critical to level the playing field, to make prices and risks clear up front, so when someone signs on for a student loan or a mortgage or a credit card, they know the tricks and traps hidden in the fine print. That's why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been working on a new financial aid shopping sheet. A shorter, two-page credit card agreement, a simpler mortgage disclosure form. All those are aimed toward helping people understand the basic bargain.

I oppose the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It's an ill-conceived project that would lock us into further dependence on some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet.

The choice before us is simple. Will we continue to subsidize the dirty fossil fuels of the past, or will we transition to 21st century clean, renewable energy?

We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.

I don't like credit cards. Let me triple underline that.